While a ban would play a key role in stabilising world greenhouse gas emissions, it would come at significant cost to smallholder farmers in rural areas.

The study is part of the institution’s ongoing efforts to improve understanding of the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

IDB’s Natural Resources Economist Eirivelthon Lima, who coordinated the study, said: “[T]he potential income that the rural poor could receive from protecting the forest is much smaller than the income they would typically get by clearing land to grow crops…A complete ban on land clearing in the tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean would therefore require compensatory policies to make the ban feasible and to prevent local poverty from increasing.”